Moving Past Auditions and Collab w/ Jordan Rudolph!

Well, things have been crazy at the day job recently.  My schedule has been in flux and I'm looking into backup options for if the worst should happen and they close our branch of this nonprofit.  Still, I'm making the time to both honor the commitments I've already made to projects I've been cast in and audition for new ones.  Voiceover is the one thing in my life where I love being busy, and I feel listless if I don't have a full plate.  It helps me keep perspective and avoid getting too bogged down with worrying about the day job.  The goal has always been to have it be temporary anyway, not a career.  If I end up having to make a change, then I can always do something else to make rent.  Whatever I need to do in order to keep us moving toward our real goals!

But that brings me to the topic I wanted to touch on, just to remind myself if not educate anyone that might happen by this.  It's important, once you've finished an audition and submitted it, to just move on.  Not all projects make it past the casting stage, and even if they do the sheer odds are that you probably aren't going to get cast.  So treat the audition as the entire job, finish it to the best of your ability, and move on to the next thing.  If you get an email or a DM later on announcing that you got it, then great!  If you don't, then it's no big deal because you've already got other things on your mind.

I had to remind myself of this today, because there was an audition that I know I just nailed.  I think I did fantastic.  Just blew it out of the water.  But there have been no updates nor casting announcements for about a week.  Not even a "thanks for auditioning, we're going over them and will get back to you!"  So I kept that tab open, refreshing it every day, checking to see if they'd done anything with it.  I've realized that all it was doing was stressing me out and keeping me from doing other auditions.  It's a useless waste of my attention.  So I closed the tab and recorded ten more auditions and all the lines for Grandpa Joe this morning.  BAM!  Much better use of that energy.

If they go dark, or someone else gets cast in that project I was obsessing over, then I at least have a new voice I discovered during the process I can use elsewhere.  I also learned a ton about my audio software just by having to deal with a character that is VERY LOUD AND ENERGETIC ALL THE TIME.  It's a net improvement in my skill level no matter what.  I can be happy about that. 

(Thanks #VOLife Clothing for the new t-shirt!)

Another thing that I'm excited about is my recent collab with Jordan Rudolph that was released last week.  I tweeted about it, but I wanted to throw the link on here as well for Facebook and Instagram readers.  In her cover of Kiss the Girl from Disney's The Little Mermaid for her Patreon, which you should totally check out, Jordan asked me to contribute the spoken lines of Prince Eric!  I haven't done a lot of voice matching, but I loved the opportunity to practice copying the cadence and inflections of another actor -- in this case the amazing C.D. Barnes, who you may also know as the voice of Peter Parker/Spider-Man from the 1994 animated Spider-Man cartoon.  I think I got pretty close!

Looking forward to the Memorial Day Weekend, when I get to record for a podcast here in Portland (which I will tell you more about next time) and do some more auditions!